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Beginning in the early 60s, although the film makes no effort to graft a coherent timeline, the song trio known as The Dreamettes are desperate to get on the bill for an Amateur night competition. While they are best friends and share the spotlight equally, the lead is the strongest voice coming from full-figured Effie White (Jennifer Hudson) while the more humble Deena Jones (Beyonce) and eager Lorrell Robinson (Anika Noni Rose) march to her tune. Recognizing their talent (and other comely features) is car salesman/burgeoning theatrical promoter, Curtis Taylor Jr. (Jamie Foxx) who bribes the competition into snubbing them so he can take over as management. After a bit of resistence from Diva Effie (“I don’t do backup”), Curtis gets them a gig doing the “oohs” and “aaahs” behind James “Thunder” Early (Eddie Murphy) on his tour across America.

The act is by all means a success but Early is still desperate to find a new sound. (Too bad Marty McFly wasn’t around.) Effie’s brother, C.C. (Keith Robinson), long their songwriter pitches Early a more pop-centric ditty to the chagrin of his longtime manager, Marty Madison (Danny Glover), who sees his client slipping away to the promises of Curtis. The ridiculously lame song, “Cadillac Car” is made all the lamer once whitey gets a hold of it, leading Curtis and the others to follow headstrong into the Payola scandal of the day to get their music heard. But money only goes so far as Early’s attempts to crossover into white America are met with baffled looks and walkouts. Curtis then finally succumbs to making Effie’s dream come true by giving their girls their own act, albeit with one little change. Deena is taking over as lead vocal.

Before someone starts singing again and interrupts me, we’re going to take a pause break away from the myriad of problems Dreamgirls has and focus on the character of Effie. This is the character that we are supposed to sympathize with as her dreams go up in smoke, but when you back away from Jennifer Hudson’s powerful voice, this is an awfully difficult character to wrap your arms around. She’s loud, continually pouty and has the first instinct to consider her own needs before anyone else. Then the shift occurs at the first curtain where Effie will either mount a comeback, having learned something about her behavior and inspiring our cheers for overcoming the royal screw job she received – OR – she will settle into obscurity and gain our sympathy. The story cannot make up its mind any which way and decides to give us a taste a both right up to a phonier-than-thou ending where you begin to imagine what it would be like to pay good money to see the Beatles’ final public performance and have them bring up Stu Sutcliffe for the final song (if, you know, he was still alive.)

The emotional connection for any of the relationships or to the individual characters is non-existent and that’s thanks in good parts to Bill Condon’s handling of the musical numbers. More than half are of the stage performance variety, interrupted frequently with a tendency to montage that isn’t uncommon in musicals, but done in such a way that screams were watching a montage (of money, traveling, success) instead of vital storytelling points. So when Condon does sneak in talking points right in the middle of songs, its not viable as anything but rushed information and an interruption of whatever the song itself wants to tell us. Unlike Alan Parker’s Evita which paused for no more than a breath in-between songs, Condon seems hesitant in fully going down that road and so scenes of actual conversation are nothing more than expository dialogue providing no insight or feeling into these characters’ issues. And yet, the film feels like one long anthem with the needle continually skipping back upon itself. The supposed showstopping moment at the end of Act I, with Effie doing the Diva equivalent of a nine-minute guitar riff is so overblown and show-Effie that I was praying to the Gods of Motown that Ike Turner would show up and put some stank on her so she would finally just shut the crap up.

It will be easy to meld Hudson’s “performance” with her performance, thus fueling the yearlong speculation that she’s the front runner for the Oscar. But no one nominated Renee Zellweger for her singing in Chicago. Hudson certainly shows promise as an actress, but this story does a disservice to that promise by never allowing a range to her character. Not once does she share with us a moment of regret, of sadness or anything in Act II. She’s just making less money and caring for a daughter who is used as nothing more than a plot prop to accentuate the “poor me” element of the struggling ex-Diva. Would it have killed Condon to include just ONE scene of Effie caring for her kid, maybe reassuring her that her own dreams are worth following even in a world that may tell you to quit. Great role model there – and this is, again, the character we’re supposed to sympathize with. As the character inspired by Supreme’s original member, Florence Ballard, there’s a somewhat iniquitous maneuver in both the stage production and the film to give her the third act she never had. In real life, Ballard’s non-success after leaving the group ended in poverty and death at the age of only 32. If Effie even came close to this bout of depression, its misrepresented in the story and has the curious feel of a whitewash that Ms. Ross would have approved of.

Every actor in the film does the best with what they’re given. Foxx is smooth ad manipulative as Curtis, much better in the earlier scenes than the character’s transition to full-blown heavy. Beyonce, nearly unrecognizable in the beginning (and curiously less attractive the more makeup is painted on), basically gets the puppy dog role in the character we expect to grow into a ruthless drunk of fame. Thus, she is alternately the weakest of character in the whole film, unable to open her mouth in protest when she clearly wants to resulting in curiously subdued moments of independence and reconciliation towards the end. As for Eddie Murphy, we know he can pull off the flamboyance of the James Brown meets Little Richard (with a late dash of Elvis Costello thrown in) concoction. His J.B. hottub impersonation is still an SNL classic and two of the film’s best moments - when Early breaks protocol by busting into the material he claims he originated – may as well have ended with him slamming down the mike and shouting out “SEXUAL CHOCOLATE!” It’s his quieter Marvin Gaye moments that give Murphy’s Oscar push the resonance it needs because nothing else he does here we haven’t seen him do better in Bowfinger, The Nutty Professor and, yes, Coming To America.

I’m not busting Dreamgirls for being the product of overhype and precisely the sort of film that would have given Christopher Guest’s For Your Consideration a better bullseye. Almost Famous, The Commitments, That Thing You Do – what separates Dreamgirls from the Music Group 101 of rise, fall and maybe comeback other than skin color? I could have thrown The Five Heartbeats onto the list, except that’s not a good movie either. But so many musicals, like the recent film versions of Rent and The Phantom of the Opera, fail even without the glowering clichés that Dreamgirls unapologetically flaunt as if it was the first story to come up with it – a bit of supreme irony once you’ve sat through it’s theft twists the third time in the film. There’s not one song you will walk out of the viewing humming and that’s because, unlike a late theme introduced, these songs are for the individual performers and not for us. It’s not about joy for us but pity for themselves, inspiring nobody’s dreams in the process.

link directly to this review at http://www.efilmcritic.com/review.php?movie=15299&reviewer=198
originally posted: 12/15/06 16:17:19
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